The Echoed Realm

Those of you who know me, also know I love a dark visceral story with a suffering bad boy to pine over and a female character that manages to be both strong and non-annoying in the process. The Echoed Realm (The Chaos Cycle Duology #2) by AJ Vrana definitely has all that and much more. I completely fell for Kai and Miya in book one, The Hollow Gods, and couldn't wait to get my hands on the follow-up. Let me tell you, Vrana does NOT disappoint. What I love about a series that trails specific characters.. is that you get to see them grow and evolve.. and everyone's doing that here. They've all come a long way, but the road ahead may be longer still. The second part of their story finds them on the move. Black Hollow is far behind them geographically, if not far from their thoughts and dreams. Three years have passed and the Dreamwalker has become the hunter. Traveling from place to place in search of the types of entities that would see darkness swallow us all, she has one goal in mind.. ending them. Kai has found companionship, but it comes with a cost. Bound to the Dreamwalker, his movements have never been more restrictive and though he would do anything to protect her, he longs for his freedom. Mason discovers things are not at all as they seem, that his decisions and movements may merely be the result of strings being pulled outside his periphery.. leaving him to question his situation and himself. While age old beings close in on them and their friends, Miya struggles with memories that don't completely make sense and a future she doesn't know how to control. There's a gorgeously macabre new villain added to the mix of problems the group already has to deal with in this book. Positively appalling and sympathetic, sometimes simultaneously. Though my favorite aspect of this addition is Kai's way of dealing with them. I'm not sure there's a snarkier character out there that's actually funny. Often they're just overdone, but his reactions just rang so true at times that I laughed out loud.. then had to explain myself to those around me. He can be such a PITA in such a good way. Likewise, Crowbar is a fantastic supplement to the cast of characters. She's pretty much everything I like in my favorite female characters. Who knew an author could hit that out of the park three times in one series? Between her, Ama, and Miya.. my expectations for strong female protagonists has been solidified. I used to think what I wanted just didn't happen in modern storytelling, but they're proof otherwise. Certainly, the dreamworld sequences are fantastically moody. While the transitions are smooth, the weight of that shift becomes heavy.. which is so beautifully suited to the story being told there and I love, LOVE the new villain's backstory. I can't recommend this book and this series enough. It's shadowy, Slavic folklore at its best in an adult fantasy setting, filled with both traditional and existential horrors.. and I still want more.. (I received this title as an ARC, but also purchased two physical copies. All opinions are mine and freely given.)